How Peter Hurley became a top portrait photographer

Renowned advertising and commercial shooter Peter Hurley is the subject of a video in a series called #BehindtheGlass, where the New York and Los Angeles based photographer talks candidly about his non-traditional path into the industry.

Hurley spent his post college days training to be an Olympic athlete in competitive sailing, but failed to make the cut in 1996. In a twist of fate he met a designer Donna Karan and DKNY sponsored him for his Olympic bid. That lead to a modeling gig for Ralph Lauren where he met legendary photographer Bruce Weber, who become a big influence in Hurley’s life.

This is only the beginning of how Hurley became a photographer. It’s one of those head-smacking, jaw-dropping stories that shows photography is part skill, some chance and a lot of hard work.

The most powerful takeaway is that the same effort and dedication it takes to become an athlete is what it takes to become a high-end photographer. The 12-minute video is a great look at someone who loves his life and how success often comes to those who are open to life’s changes in direction.

It’s certainly one of the most unique 'how I become a photographer' stories we’ve heard in a while.

A contender for Olympic sailing probably has a lot of neat stories to tell about learning the sport and all the challenges faced in finding sponsors or getting admitted to crews. Of course, no one imagines that sailing ever leads to money. Any boater knows that the hobby involves huges amounts of chores and drudgery. Big breaks can come from unpaid help to others for fixing, cleaning, maintaining, launching, stowing, and other labor intensive tasks. The helper may not become captain, but status as first mate confers many saling pleasures and honors without the monetary headaches of ownership.

Photography, on the other hand, draws a lot of people with the unfounded notion that success will come if they overspend on a camera and take pictures of stuff they like. They don't like help or advice, and cannot offer their "crew" any thrills at sea turns at the rudder.

Ya gotta luv all the negativity in these comments. :)Folks, the boy "finds" himself a great life and shares that with us. Opportunity knocked many times and he answered to become successful. End of story? No, to be continued throughout the remainder of his life. In the faux land of NY and LA, this video portrays him as real. It's nice to see that over the front-of-camera face-mask so many have. I hope he continues to do well and continues to share his knowledge and experiences with us. The video is laggy in some places and he tends to ramble a bit, no big surprise for someone blabbing continuously for that length of time in monologue format.

Well... He'd probably be successful doing something else. It's to his credit that he has the modesty to acknowledge those who have helped him, but the reason he is in high demand today is because his work is excellent.

Did you actually bother to look at his website? Did you go onto the portrait section, the men section, the woman section? Those are not just photos of faces.

As for the headshot work you are correct in a way, they are not portraits. They are actors headshots. That is why an actor does not go to a portrait photographer, because that type of photographer does not understand what needs to come across in an actors headshot. If they use a portrait photographer then their casting calls start to dry up and their income reduces. The skills set to taking good actors headshots is totally different to that required of a portrait photographer.

Lasted through half of the video and then looked at his website after reading this comment.Knowledge of Donna Karan and knowledge of composition are interchangeable – that's my conclusion. You only need one of these blessings to be a "top photographer".

@bogdescu: No, not interchangeable. With good people!s skills you can get jobs through Dona Karan and you can get the best composition advice from the best photographers who you made acquaintance with and who are happy to help you with their advice. For mediocre talents with great people's skills the sky is the limit.

What I find truly amazing is how Peter Hurley manages to take photos of people which such strange noses.

Seriously, scan through the portfolio As Seen On Broadway on his website http://peterhurley.com/photography/actors-headshots/broadway/ and be amazed at how, after the first 4-5 shots, every single photo draws your eye to the nose. Every time. It's like a gallery of freaky noses - sorry to sound so childish.

My point is, either Hurley has secretly chosen to photograph oddly-nosed actors or, more likely, a combination of his photography and post-production makes the portraits look very strange.

In addition, the eyes are far too artificially whitened and lightened and are over-coloured. It's a personal thing, but they are too enhanced for me - it's very fashionable to over whiten/colour the eyes, but it looks unnatural.

I admire his career and his portraits are generally excellent, but when your technique draws attention to the nose each time, something is off.

That's because actors often have something "different" about their facial features. If you look at the most successful actors and/or the ones with the longest careers, there's always something imperfect about them. The typical beauties, male and female, usually flame out after a few pictures.

This is a video about a photographer. Single scene. Even though the topic is interesting, it gets boring watching the video very quickly.

Now for some constructive criticism. It would have been A LOT better if the video has 1. Photos from Hurley's early days2. Photo of the Bruce Weber and the work inspired the Hurley3. Photos of his 2000 Olympic team4. Photo of he and his GF, wife5. Photos of his modeling work6. various signature photos by the photographer inserted during his interview....

To be interesting to most commentators on this website, it would have been better had he spent 12 minutes talking about camera sensors, pixel depth, micro lenses and anti-aliasing filters. Then there would be 1000s of enthusiastic posts.

@SnakePlissken – spot on.@joe6pack:You are right, but the visual material needed to illustrate a photographer's professional evolution only exists if... he actually had a professional evolution. Of course these should be 90% photos BY him instead of OF him.In this case however we seem to have no professional evolution, only hanging around people that are "in the industry" until something clicked. Generations of photographers that worked hard and studied for their entire lives would be turning in their graves. If they cared.

Whether you like the pictures is immaterial. Mr. Hurley is shooting to grab the eye of a very small but discriminating group: casting directors, producers, and directors. His pictures are judged on whether his clients book acting and commercial jobs, which is apparently what they do well.

With digital cameras, I think a trick to shoot portrait is to shoot with the camera of your choice set in burst mode while the person is posing, making faces. Out of the hundred shots, there will be at least a few good ones or many.

That's like telling an athlete he got lucky when he makes a game winning shot. It underscores his practice, preparation, and even something as basic as the sheer willingness to take the shot. Dude obviously had some breaks, doesn't mean anyone with some skill would've capitalized on them the same way.

AlexRuiz, not artistic photos. They are spec photos. Like passport photos, it fits whatever casting people want, certain angles and certain light. Nothing more, nothing less. Portrait photography as form of artistic expression is completely different. He does his job, that's it. But nothing special.

Actually the making of successful headshots does take a lot. He makes it look easy because he has a ton of experience and an ability to put his clients at ease. Successful commercial photographers at the top end are not the mediocre button pushers you and others here seem to think they are but represent a LOT of hard work that has resulted in what looks like good luck.Once you have your retrospective at MOMA you can preach to us a bit more about art.

Peter started with a Mamiya 645 (a smallish medium format film camera that now lives on as both the Mamiya and Phase One 645 bodies). That made a lot of sense at the time for anyone who was aiming for pro work - not too tremendously expensive (as these things go), and enlarges well with a LOT less grain than 35mm. And digital wasn't really a thing yet at the time (2000). You can do pretty much the same thing he was doing at the time with any of the current generation of larger-chip enthusiast/pro digital cameras (film grain isn't a concern anymore, and the ISOs where noise becomes a problem would have been strictly double-naught spy work stuff in the film days; nothing you'd use for headshots). You still have the sun, and any lighting you might want to use is a whole lot cheaper at the entry level than it was back then. And the learning resources today compared to then?! All you need is the drive.

The only drawback to the increasing number of videos being used on sites instead of written pages is that it takes 2-3 times as long watching a video to glean the same information as reading something, if the writer is any good and not prone to producing "filler."

I guess (hope?) you mean that it pays to be lucky *and* talented.Mr. Hurley clearly has boatloads of photographic and creative talent. He is also a terrific instructor (watch some of his video tutorials). Perhaps your talent would be more easily discovered if you had any photos that people could look at. I checked your gallery, and found nothing.

Most of what makes Peter's work stand out is a phenomenon I've described as creating "a person who happens to be in a picture rather than a picture that happens to have a person in it". There are an awful lot of highly competent camera operators, lighting technicians, colourists and designers out there who pretty much forget that the end game of headshots and portraiture is to have the viewer look *through* the picture *at* the person. The purely photographic aspect is often about not making any real mistakes; the human connection is what elevates the merely good to excellence (in this genre). It doesn't matter whether you're talking about Hurley's running banter and simple setups or the intricacies of a Karsh, it's the ability to breathe life and the sense of "knowing" the subject into the picture that makes all of the difference.